Ideas to interventions (I2I) is a new community, formed in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The I2I community is a first step toward achieving the goal of building and nurturing a network of researchers who are interested in “early-phase behavioral translation research,” – the translation of novel ideas and approaches from basic behavioral and social sciences research into new strategies to address pressing clinical or public health problems. The primary objective is to broaden, deepen and build new connections among individuals interested and engaged in developing new and potentially more effective approaches to behavioral health problems, including researchers, clinicians, patients and the public.

This website (https://i2ihub.org/) will host information for members, and potential members, to learn more about each other’s work.

Funding Opportunity Purpose: This FOA invites applications for planning cooperative agreements (U34) for a national, multisite, observational cohort study to prospectively examine the risk and protective factors for neurocognitive complications of pediatric type 1 diabetes (T1D; onset approximately ages 5-10 years) and a comparison sample. The U34 is designed to: 1) Permit early peer review of the rationale for the proposed cohort study; 2) Permit assessment of the study design; and 3) Provide support for the development of essential elements required for the design and conduct of the cohort study and the management and analysis of the study data. Consultation with NIDDK scientific staff is strongly encouraged prior to the submission of the U34 application.

Application Due Date: April 11, 2019, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization

Linda M. Collins, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Human Development & Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, United States. She is also Director of The Methodology Center, an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the advancement and dissemination of quantitative methods for applications in drug abuse prevention and treatment, as well as other areas in the behavioral sciences. Dr. Collins’s research interests include the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), an engineering-inspired methodological framework for optimizing and evaluating behavioral, biobehavioral, and biomedical interventions. The objective of MOST is to improve intervention effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and scalability. Dr. Collins is currently collaborating on research applying MOST to develop optimized behavioral interventions in the areas of smoking cessation, weight loss, prevention of excessive drinking and risky sex in college students, and HIV services. Her research has been funded by NIDA, NCI, NIDDK, and NIAAA.

The microbiome is now considered our “second genome,” with potentially comparable importance to the genome in determining human health. There is, however, a relatively limited understanding of the broader environmental factors, particularly social conditions, that shape variation in human microbial communities. Fulfilling the promise of microbiome research—particularly the microbiome’s potential for modification—will require collaboration between biologists and social and population scientists. For life scientists, the plasticity and adaptiveness of the microbiome calls for an agenda to understand the sensitivity of the microbiome to broader social environments already known to be powerful predictors of morbidity and mortality. For social and population scientists, attention to the microbiome may help elucidate nagging questions as to the underlying biological mechanisms that link social conditions to health. We outline key substantive and methodological advances that can be made if collaborations between social and population health scientists and life scientists are strategically pursued, as well as provide a recent example of just such a collaboration.

The Data Manager will lead the data management team at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health. S/he will have primary responsibility for database programming, data integrity, and descriptive data analysis of a number of ongoing cohort studies and behavioral trials. The Candidate will work with research project staff and investigators to ensure that both electronic and non-electronic data are stored in an IRB/HIPAA compliant manner, create SPSS/SAS files for data analysis, merge information from multiple data files, compute summary scales, develop and execute quality control procedures to enhance the integrity of the data, coordinate data core activities with regards to progress report deadlines and abstract submission deadlines, perform basic statistical analyses and assist in interpreting and presenting results, while also supervising data management staff. The candidate will interact with investigators and staff at Columbia University and at other sites and report to CBCH principal investigators.read more »

Mary Dozier is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. She obtained her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1983. She was named the Amy E. DuPont Chair in Child Development in 2007, and in 2016 was named the Francis Alison Professor, the university’s highest faculty honor. Over the last 25 years, she has studied the development of young children in foster care and young children living with neglecting birth parents, examining challenges in attachment and regulatory capabilities. Along with her graduate students and research team, she developed an intervention, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up, that targets specific issues that have been identified as problematic for young children who have experienced adversity. This intervention has been shown to enhance children’s ability to form secure attachments, and to regulate physiology and behavior normatively, among other things. She received the International Congress on Infant Studies’ Translational Research Award in 2018, and has been named the 2019 recipient of the APA Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution in Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.

The field of behavior change suffers from significant fragmentation and poor reporting. Here, we describe two large-scale initiatives — the Human Behavior Change Project and Science of Behavior Change program — that aim to introduce complementary systematic and rigorous methods to advance the science of behavior change.

Seeking Postdoctoral Applicants: T32 Precision Lifestyle Medicine and Translation Research (PREMIER) Postdoctoral Training Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago

The program objective is to provide postdoctoral fellows who aspire to be both independent investigators and team scientists in lifestyle medicine the opportunity to develop skills in prevention and control of cardiovascular and respiratory chronic conditions translational research. Fellows can focus their research and skill developments in either of these cores of central interest: